Monday, April 28, 2014

Comet C/2014 E2 Jacques

I have been trying to stretch my detection limits using the DMK51 and a 26mm kern lens. Imaging with this setup is very easy to deploy when mounted on the simple AltAz mount I made earlier.
This is a no track, but a drift imaging method. The lens allows a FOV of 15x10 degrees. At an exposure time of about 10 seconds the stars do not trail. Using my custom imaging software I can automatically gather a long sequence of PNG images.
Then using ImageJ to make a registered medium of about 60 images. My lower limits are around MAG ~9 – 10 at a push. But Mag 8 is really about it. So looks like I still need wait for the comet Jacques to warm up a bit more.

Update 20140414 - A clear evening with a beyond three quarter moon. I think I can just about get Jacques to appear after some heavy pixel pushing using ImageJ. Hope it gets a bit brighter.
Here is a cropped section from a 15x10 FOV, seeing down to mag 10. At the arrow very fuzzy..??

Update 20140428 - Got a good break last night. The afternoon southerly breezes slowed to still air. A cool and clear night with good seeing. So popped out the ED80mm and 450d Dslr on the eq6. Alignment was good for 30 sec images stacks of 10 images. Got C/2014 E2 Jacques and a few of the old fave's.:D

Update 20140507 - Another go at this comet, good result with a sum of 10x30sec images.